In the midst of the clearing in the Untamed Jungle, Michael and dozens of people stared blankly at a black leather scroll that had been sealed with golden wax.
The scroll hovered in the air above Michael, exactly where the 10,000 Summoning Scroll Fragments had disappeared a moment ago.
"Isn't that a Mythic Summoning Scroll?" Mika asked, his eyes widened in surprise.
"Yep. This is definitely a Mythic Summoning Scroll…" Liopham nodded in affirmation, causing Mika's jaw to hit the ground.
His eyes flitted to the small mountain of Summoning Scroll Fragments and back to the black leather scroll.
"Michael can turn these Summoning Scroll Fragments into Mythic Summoning Scrolls? I thought he can only create Ordinary Summoning Scrolls from them," Mika murmured.
This time, Liopham had nothing else to add. He was also quite confused by the outcome. However, he was not the only one. Even Michael was stupefied.
'Was that always possible? That's…amazing!'
A tinge of excitement spread through his body. The tens of thousands of corpses had given him 10,000 Summoning Scrolls already. Creating enough living space for 10,000 new summons in a span of 24 hours was quite challenging. Thus, Michael had been a little worried, wondering what he should do with the 305,000ish Summoning Scroll Fragments he had extracted on top of the Ordinary Summoning Scrolls.
But given that 10,000 Summoning Scroll Fragments could form a Mythic Summoning Scroll, Michael felt that all his worries were unfounded. In fact, his worries turned into joy, knowing that he'll be able to increase his army by 10,000 New Summons in addition to 30 guaranteed 2-Star Summons.
That thought was enough to disperse his exhaustion and invigorate him with newfound power. He turned to the pile of Summoning Scroll Fragments and began to combine them into Mythic Summoning Scrolls.
Less than ten minutes later, Michael was only left with 5,000 Summoning Scroll Fragments. The rest had been turned into 30 Mythic Summoning Scrolls.
Michael stored the Summoning Scroll Fragments away. He then focused on the 10,000ish Ordinary Summoning Scrolls and the 30 Mythic Summoning Scrolls.
However, instead of being able to pay his full attention to the Summoning Scrolls, Michael's attention kept drifting to the other piles of loot as well.
A huge pile of close to 5,000 Tier-1 Artifacts, and 500 Tier-2 Artifacts entered his view before his focus was pulled over to thousands of blueprints of varying rarity. There were more than 6000 Blueprints, close to 300 Memory Orbs, and a total of 43,532 SoulStar Fragments.
Other than that, Michael also extracted a total of 19 Soultrait Symbols.
Each pile was worth a fortune, and all of this belonged to him – and his territory. All it took was a single huge battle for him and his people to earn a massive fortune of goods that some were unlikely to procure after spending years in the Origin Expanse.
"What should I start with?" Michael asked himself at this point.
Until now, he had never been confused about the loot he had obtained and how to optimize its use. However, looking at the various piles of loot, it was only obvious that Michael felt a little bit overwhelmed.
At the end of the day, Michael accessed his spatial pouch to store all Artifacts away. He would distribute some of them later before selling the rest either to the Forest Elven tribe or in the Saphirelake Military Academy's shops.
The blueprints were already sorted by his Summons. They moved the duplicates into the warehouse where they would be kept in large boxes. Once needed, they would be retrieved.
This left Michael with the Summoning of countless new Summons, around 300 Memory Orbs, and both SoulStar Fragments and Soultrait Symbols.
Feeling a bad incoming headache, Michael chose to use logic. Since he had spent several hours extracting tens of thousands of corpses, it was already close to night by the time he was done. The sun would disappear beyond the horizon soon. Summoning more than ten thousand Summons would stress out everyone because they would need a place to sleep and rest.
Thus, Michael postponed the summoning procedure as the first task of the following morning.
Afterward, Michael followed his gut feeling. He was the most interested in upgrading Extraction to a 6-Star Soultrait. It was already quite powerful – even in combat – so Michael wanted to take a look and witness the power of a 6-Star Soultrait on his own.
He allowed the Extraction Soultrait to devour the 43,532 SoulStar Fragments entirely. The process was interesting to look at. The Extraction Symbol devoured the purple wisps of energy within the fragments instantaneously before slowly forming the 6th star of the Soultrait Symbol.
As such, two hours passed in the blink of an eye. The last SoulStar Fragment had been devoured, yet the 6th star hadn't been completely formed.
Michael was quite disappointed seeing the almost completed 6th star of his Extraction Symbol.
He didn't think much about it before he began utilizing Extraction on the 19 Soultrait Symbols he had extracted from the corpses of 7000 Adventurers. One Soultrait Symbol after another was extracted, dismantling into hundreds of SoulStar Fragments each.
Michael's Extraction Symbol devoured the SoulStar Fragments the moment they'd been formed, slowly but steadily completing the Symbol's 6th star.
When only two more Soultrait Symbols were left, a wave of energy spread through Michael's body. The origin energy within him began to feel more potent. It began to squirm, seemingly alive as a flood of information swept his mind.
Extraction had been upgraded to a 6-Star Soultrait!
Instinctively, Michael could feel a qualitative change in Extraction's utility. Extraction's potency had increased exponentially, but that was not everything.
Michael could clearly tell that the origin energy inside his body had been invigorated. It felt more alive and much stronger than usual. But there was still more. Extraction's upgrade to a 6-Star Soultrait improved Michael's perception drastically.
Everything around him felt different than before. It was almost as if his senses and perception had received an upgrade from 720p to 4k. The sudden change was weird, and it was a great discomfort at first.
However, Michael quickly adjusted himself to the changes within him.
Feeling the need to test out his Soultrait, Michael approached the Summoning Gate. He used Extraction while opening the hatches to the three Summoning Cores.
The hatches opened quite easily, almost as if the Summoning Gate knew what was about to happen. The next moment thigh-thick streams of golden energy shot out of his left palm. They burst forth and engulfed the Summoning Cores at once, extracting a large amount of impurities right off the bat.
In the next two minutes, Extraction extracted more impurities out of the Summoning Cores than Michael had extracted out of them during all of his Extraction sessions in the past, put together. It was a massive amount that made him wonder how many impurities a common Summoning Core could compress inside it.
The extracted impurities were collected and burned. Yet, Michael's curiosity hadn't been quelled.
He went to the warehouse where hundreds of monster corpses were stored. Using Extraction, Michael filled the entire warehouse with thick golden streams of energy.
'Higher efficiency, easier control, the ability to use Extraction on multiple targets, lower energy consumption, higher potency, higher drop-rate, and an innate enhancement of my origin energy, combined with a reinforcement of my perception…Is that the difference between a 5-Star Soultrait and a 6-Star Soultrait?'
Michael wondered and after a while thought that everything made sense now. A 6-Star Soultrait might be initially difficult to control, but it enhanced the user's strength drastically as well. Once the wielder of a 6-Star Soultrait gained a little bit of experience with the utility of the Soultrait it would turn into a deadly weapon.
All it required was some experience and the right state of mind.
Michael's experience with Extraction was already extremely high. Even though the Soultrait had merely been upgraded to the 6th star that didn't change the way it could be utilized, it was still the same, merely with a few additional functions.
This gave him an exceptional advantage; the ability to use a 6-Star Soultrait's power in a way most cannot do even after a year or two.
"I want to fight Lincoln and Zeke again…" Michael mused to himself, a faint smile blossoming on his face.
Then his attention moved to the remaining two Soultrait Symbols. They were not combat-related, which he presumed according to the pictures displayed on the Symbols engraved on the Soultraits. One of the Symbols showed a brain, another one a book.
'They should strengthen my brain and increase my learning capability…maybe…' Michael hoped secretly.
The only reason he didn't use Extraction on those two Soultrait Symbols before was because he hoped to fuse them with himself. If these two Soultraits allowed him to reinforce his brain and learning capability, Michael would have a much easier time multitasking in battle – using several Soultraits simultaneously at their full power –, and for studying.
Unfortunately, Michael's prediction was wrong.
While the two Soultrait Symbols weren't combat-related, they didn't strengthen his brain, nor did they enhance his ability to study more and faster.
He bound the two Soultrait Symbols and learned a lot that cleared his misconception.
Both Soultraits were 1-Star Soultraits. One was called [Mind Reader], and its power was exactly what the name suggested; one could read the mind of the target. While that sounded nice, it was far from easy. Mind Reader had various restrictions.
First, it required the user to touch the target, the closer to the head the better. Second, the energy consumption was enormous. Third, the target could use his willpower to resist his mind being read.
Michael could think of one or two instances in which Mind Reader was useful, but he'd expected something better. Upgrading Mind Reader was definitely not useful for the time being.
The second Soultrait he bound was also a little weird. It was called [Soul Grimoire], a 1-Star Soultrait that stored the souls of the deceased. It couldn't do anything else.
The Soultrait seemed a little weird.
Nonetheless, Michael was quite happy. It was not as if he lost anything by fusing these two Soultraits to himself.
In the worst case, he could just use Extraction on these two Soultraits to remove them.
"Well, whatever. Being able to upgrade Extraction to a 6-Star Soultrait is already more than I expected. I should digest the Memory Orbs and go to sleep. The Summoning Scrolls are already waiting for me!"
